February 2007
What Is The Link Between Pirates, Pollution And The EU?
Crimes against the environment are much like piracy. That is not to suggest they are committed by people wearing eye-patches and hunting for gold (although their personification of evil and greed may be well represented by this anachronism); rather they are both regarded as international crimes.
This is because of their truly international reach. Laws of the sea and against piracy were some of the earliest and most effective laws in the international sphere. Where pirates could come from any country, operate against anyone, act in non-territorial waters and remain beyond the reach of the law, international co-operation created a set of rules against which the pirates could be effectively held to account.
Today we see a very familiar pattern with regard to the environment. Polluters, regardless of which country they are in, affect everyone with their actions and are able to get away with it to varying degrees depending on where they are situated. Surely a criminal act of pollution should be regarded as such wherever one may be?
With the unique standpoint of some in the international community, claming that "the jury is still out"; on climate change (John Howard) and that we can still be selfish about the environment: "this is the American position because its right for America"; (Bush on refusing to sign the Kyoto protocols), it is even more apparent that regulating pollution simply cannot be left to national governments.
Whilst Kyoto was a step forward, it deals only with State actors, and private individuals remain outside its remit. Moreover, it is as individuals, through taking personal responsibility for our waste at a social and corporate level, that we may hope to seriously address climate change. And though we must strive to think globally we must begin by acting locally, and for us, that begins with the EU. Thus EU proposals to punish perpetrators of "green crimes"; which include the release of toxic chemicals and dumping hazardous waste are a welcome development.
With minimum jail sentences of between 1 and 10 years in addition to fines of at least €1.5m, Franco Frattini, European Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs hopes that this will have the necessary dissuasive effect on polluters that has so far been lacking through civil sanction alone. This is especially important in the light of criminal sanctions not being in force across all European states for the proposed crimes. Indeed, cost benefit analyses conducted by many companies have revealed the dumping of waste to be a more cost effective solution within an acceptable risk envelope, than sending the waste for treatment and proper disposal. One should not regard this as surprising following a leaked memo from Lawrence Summers, one time Chief Economits of the world bank:
"the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable, and we should face up to that.";
The need for laws combating this form of free-market racketeering has been recently highlighted by the payment of £100m by Trafigura to the Ivory Coast government after being accused of illegally disposing of toxic waste near Abidjan. Trafigura’s hasty payment of the £100m sum (almost exactly the amount they were being sued for), denial of responsibility to avoid adverse publicity and an unfavourable, precedent-setting court decision, as well as securing release of their director and two senior employees from an Ivorian jail, is all of course co-incidental. But the need to avoid such costly co-incidences in future, and indeed to protect British business (not forgetting potential victims of polluters) is voiced by Chris Davies, environmental spokesman for the Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament:
"I don’t think we should support cheats. What the commission is trying to do is ensure that not only do we meet the object of legislation, which is to protect the environment, but that we have a level playing field for British business [in the EU]";.
In short, such laws can only benefit British business by preventing a rush to the lowest common denominator in environmental protection by new and prospective EU member states so as to secure the investment of big business.
What is crucial, is the need to overcome entrenched hostile attitudes in the implementation of this law. Concerns that sovereignty in determining criminal sanctions is being ceded to "bureaucrats from Brussels"; ignores the fact that we have already ceded such competency over certain issues to international bodies (including the ICC) as well as the fact that the UK has always retained a residual sovereignty from the EU. Moreover, such smoke-screening clouds the fact that where national governments across Europe have been largely ineffectual in attempting to normalise an environmental criminal standard so as to effectively combat crimes against both our human and physical geography, the EU may well succeed.
It is up to the politicians of the member-states to give their backing to the scheme, and prove that they really are serious about protecting our planet.
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